Play with Last.FM

crabbox · Post by **crabbox** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 12:50 pm

Just build Play from revision 254. Works ok but how do I get my Last.Fm account working with it ?

Cheers !

Post by **sbooth** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 2:47 pm

You need to grab the official Last.FM client. If the client is running on your machine, Play will notify it.

crabbox · Post by **crabbox** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 6:18 pm

Cheers ! Now it is working...

mGee · Post by **mGee** » Sat Mar 24, 2007 2:21 am

Play last.fm support is only halfway there. It doesn't actually scrobble the track... and album information isn't sent to the client.

Post by **sbooth** » Sat Mar 24, 2007 2:40 am

mGee wrote:Play last.fm support is only halfway there. It doesn't actually scrobble the track... and album information isn't sent to the client.

Do you have the official client installed and running? If so, Play will send the tracks you play to the client which actually does the scrobbling.

If you do have the client installed, what behavior are you seeing?

mGee · Post by **mGee** » Sat Mar 24, 2007 2:49 am

I do have the latest official client installed.

What happens is the following:

I play, for example, Donny Hathaway - The Ghetto (Live) from the album 'Donny Hathaway Live'

The track displays on the last.fm Now Playing screen. But displays another album title.

That in itself is one thing, the biggest problem is the lack of scrobbling. Normally when I play tracks in iTunes and it communicates with last.fm, the last.fm client tracks the playback – counting down until it 's time to scrobble the track, which is the halfway point in the track, I believe. Then when it scrobbles, the display is updated with "Track Scrobbled".

This behavior doesn't occur with track playback in Play. The title of the track is displayed in the status, but the client doesn't track the playback of the track and there is no countdown displayed and the client never scrobbles the track.

I'm running OSX 10.4.9 on a 1GHz PowerPC G4 Powerbook.

Post by **sbooth** » Sat Mar 24, 2007 4:47 am

This is very strange. Does this occur with all files, or only some? If only some, is it confined to one format?

I just tested again on my machine, and it worked with version 1.1.3 of the Last.FM client.

Here is a test you can try to see what Play is sending to the client. Open a Terminal window and type 'nc -l -p 33367'. Then switch over to Play and double-click a track in the queue to start it playing. You should see some output in terminal like 'START c=pla&a=CAKE&t=Short Skirt/Long Jacket&b=Comfort Eagle&m=&l=204&p=/Users/me/Music/CAKE/Comfort Eagle/04 Short Skirt_Long Jacket.ogg'.

What output do you see?

mGee · Post by **mGee** » Sat Mar 24, 2007 3:05 pm

I get this as soon as the track starts playing:

Can't grab 0.0.0.0:33367 with bind

I'm going to try and turn off 'Little Snitch' and try again... I'll let you know

mGee · Post by **mGee** » Sat Mar 24, 2007 3:07 pm

Ok, Little Snitch has nothing to do with it. With it off, I still get the same output.

Post by **sbooth** » Sat Mar 24, 2007 3:35 pm

Was the Last.fm client running at the time? It looks like something else is binding to port 33367. What other applications are open?

mGee · Post by **mGee** » Sat Mar 24, 2007 3:39 pm

The last.fm client was running.

I tested the same thing without the last.fm client running and the output that you said would occur, did occur.

Post by **sbooth** » Sat Mar 24, 2007 4:43 pm

Can you post what actually came across the port? This could help in diagnosing the problem.

mGee · Post by **mGee** » Sat Mar 24, 2007 7:23 pm

Sure. Here's what's sent:

START c=pla&a=Donny Hathaway&t=The Ghetto (live)&b=Donny Hathaway Live&m=&l=701&p=/Volumes/EXTERNAL2/R&&B, Funk and Soul/H/Donny Hathaway/1972 - Donny Hathaway Live (192)/02 - The Ghetto (live).mp3

mGee · Post by **mGee** » Sun Mar 25, 2007 12:21 am

I figured out why it wasn't working. For some reason, in Play and Cog, the files have to be in a selected directory in the 'Scrobble directories' section of the last.fm client.

With iTunes, this isn't a requirement.